This is really a bad time to be an Arab. If the average non-Arab person gets caught smoking in the plane's restroom, he most definitely would not be wrestled to the ground and cause the pilot to call for help. Fighter jets would also not be called to aid in the situation and create headlines.
But if you're Arab and have a Muslim name, even one sniff of smoke coming from the cubicle you're in can cause White House aides to rush to the US President to inform him of a possible terrorist.
Paranoia? No, it's just caution... right?
Just found this little gem of a game called Jagged Alliance 2. I've only tried a bit of it but it looks good so far. Played for a few hours but trying to figure out the controls is giving me quite a bit of frustration. Googling for forums that discuss this gave me little, but the manual turned out to be easier to find than I thought.
Jagged Alliance 2 is a tactical RPG in which you control hired mercenaries to fight for you. You have to pay them everyday, but they also offer long-term contracts that last up to a fortnight. Each merc has his or her specialty (Fox was an ex-nurse so she had pretty good medical skills), but some are more like jack-of-all trades that are slightly better at some things.
I estimate at least 20 mercenaries on the list, but I could only hire so many. I'm currently trying to play with 4 cheap mercenaries, all with 1-week contracts. Just those 4 almost bankrupt me, reducing my starting capital of $35k to $3.5k. I'll have to find some income soon, the how of which I am currently trying to find out.
As far as I can tell, I get revenue by controlling the mines in the resource-rich country the game is set in. I can also control the towns and train people but I have no idea how yet. Neither do I know how to control a mine.
I'm on my second attempt already, the first was horrible and I didn't know how to advance. It took the second try for me to find out by chance that I was supposed to give a letter written for a rebel leader to this civilian woman in the starting map. I thought she was there just for flavour, as decoration. It's not like she was unique or anything, because I met lots of other NPCs like her later.
It's either getting warm at night or the lack of exercise does affect my perception of temperature. I remember the time before I went for RT when I had to switch on my air-con every night, a habit I almost got rid of by the time my RT was finished. Now I'm getting close to switching it on every night again.
Or is it just getting warmer at night now? That's possible too. Since my RT began in Dec when it's the coolest part of the year, it makes sense too.
I wish there's some way to generate electricity. My household spends over $170 a month on the electricity bills and the tariff was recently raised at the beginning of this month by 0.69cents to 23.56cents per kWh, so I'll probably see a $4-6 rise in my bills. Not a lot, true, but it's the little things like this that make my household electricity bill reach $160-180 with only 3 person living here.
On the other hand, with 771kWh used last month, there aren't many things I can that can make a dent in that number short of covering all my windows with solar panels. That's like an average of 1.07kW.
I've never really considered why people become vegetarians or vegans (vegans avoid dairy products and eggs, vegetarians don't) until I read this article. I just assume that people stop eating meat either because their parents have always been on that sort of diet or that they are in need of the health benefits of such foods.
It's interesting to know that some avoid meat for ethical reasons. I don't mean the view that killing animals for food is wrong because that reason is complete nonsense. However I do understand how it feels wrong to cage animals for their entire lives only to end it with a quick death. To make things worse, we dump a lot of it into the trash.
Seriously, the animals led meaningless lives that were given a purpose only in death. Wasting meat is therefore very wrong, almost monstrous. Not only is that a waste of resources, but is also an insult to the lives that were given for no reason other than to be our food.
So if you think wasting rice is bad, think about wasting meat, fish and eggs too. In fact eggs are even worse if you think about it because those are animals that never even knew life. Every egg wasted is similar to an abortion, a potentially perfectly healthy lifeform thrown away for the sake of convenience.
Anyway the article does make a good point about why vegetarians should not avoid oysters. If it's true that oyster farms do little damage to the environment, then it is no more ethical to stay away from it than to eat vegetables. In fact most if not all shellfish can be consumed by vegetarians if the methods of farming them are environmentally friendly.
As for me, I'm a carnivore who hates oyster, rather like the opposite of the writer of that article.
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